Compliance Engineer Job Description Template

The compliance engineer builds the technical systems that keep a financial services business within its regulatory obligations, covering customer verification, transaction monitoring, screening, reporting and the retention of evidence. The role turns regulatory text into working software, which is a genuinely different skill from either engineering or compliance on its own, and it is why these positions are difficult to fill from either side.

Typical Duties and Responsibilities

• Build systems supporting know your customer and anti money laundering obligations
• Implement identity verification and document checking workflows
• Build transaction monitoring and alerting for suspicious activity
• Implement sanctions and politically exposed person screening
• Build regulatory reporting and its submission processes
• Maintain audit trails and evidence retention
• Implement controls that prevent prohibited activity
• Work with compliance colleagues to translate requirements into rules
• Monitor false positive rates and tune where the rules allow
• Support regulatory examinations with system evidence

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science or a related field

Required Skills and Experience

• 3+ years of engineering in a regulated financial environment
• Understanding of know your customer and anti money laundering requirements
• Experience with transaction monitoring or screening systems
• Ability to translate regulatory text into system rules
• Careful approach to audit trails and evidence
• Strong backend engineering skills
• Ability to work closely with compliance and legal colleagues
• Understanding that some controls cannot be tuned for convenience

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with a regulatory examination
• Familiarity with screening vendors and their integration